Monthly Archives: April 2014

Expect to hear a lot of I-told-you-sos from those who worried about having a former cable lobbyist chair the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is set to introduce a new set of rules governing how Internet service providers (ISPs) can treat different services in different ways, and it looks like they will hew closely to the cable industry’s line.

Late Wednesday the Wall Street Journal reported that the FCC would release new rules developed by its chairman, Tom Wheeler. This was bound to happen after a federal court struck down the FCC’s Open Internet Order in January. Wheeler’s approach to the issue of net neutrality has been the subject of much hand-wringing, with his public statements always leaving some question about his position on the issue. The new rules will likely embrace the idea that Internet service providers can create so-called fast lanes, where they charge companies to send content to customers faster. If that principle becomes law, here are a few things to expect:

The Logitech Washable Keyboard K310 is a washable keyboard which is easy to clean and dry with hand-wash-safe design. Ultra-durable, it is built to take a washing and pounding – durable keys with laser printing and UV coating. It offers comfortable typing: familiar keyboard layout and clean contemporary design feels and looks great too.

Amazon has already changed the way we shop and consume media. Who’s to say the ecommerce giant can’t also overhaul how you get your mail?

Amazon is testing out a pilot program in which its own fleet of drivers will bring Amazon packages to your door, completing the “last mile” of the delivery process, according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Amazon was not immediately available for comment.

The Seattle tech giant has been dropping hints for some time that it might develop its own delivery network. And it would be a smart place for the company to be looking for innovation: Amazon’s shipping costs have been consistently rising in recent years.

Starting a business is never as simple as you think. Businesses are increasingly diverse and countless metrics and variables need to come into effect for channels to work for the long term. Entrepreneurs and startups have to be smart and they need to be open to endless solutions. In fact, if you don’t think ahead, you can be buried in the success your business creates or possibly wrapped up in an endless supply of unforeseen work that can lead to dwindling profits.

I’ve been there. Four different credit card bills came in the mail each month: Visa, American Express, Best Buy (because they gave me a 10% discount when I bought 3 CDs), and Sears. Their balances only added up to a couple of thousand dollars each, and making the minimum payment wasn’t so bad. Then the transmission blew in my car and I had no emergency fund to pay for it.

So I put that on the credit card. I was lazy so I would routinely pay late and then get dinged with a $35 late fee. Then the card companies would jack up my interest rate. Somewhere the invisible elves that kept track of my credit score were shaking the heads and “tsk-tsk-ing” as my chances of ever getting a mortgage in the future were plummeting. Soon I was paying more each month on interest, late fees, annual charges, and ATM cash advance fees than I was for my rent.

So just like the former high-school quarterback who looks down and notices that his belly fat is obscuring the nether half of his torso, I knew it was time to do something. It was time to get back in shape.

“If only I knew then,” I sometimes think. If only I knew the following 10 things about money when I was 18, I could have avoided that whole mess.

You come in, sit down, and log in. Your morning coffee steams while you peruse the dozens of emails that await you. Some are important. Some are even urgent. But most are destined for the trash. You grind through your inbox, replying to some and flagging others for later. And by the time your real work starts, your coffee is cold and you can’t find that one important email your client sent yesterday.

Should the federal minimum wage be raised? It’s a tough question, even for business magnate Warren Buffett.

“I thought about it for 50 years and I just don’t know the answer on it,” Buffett told CNN Wednesday. “In economics you always have to say ‘and then what?’ And the real question is are more people going to be better off if it is raised,” he said.

Buffett also said that the current federal minimum of $7.25 is not a living wage. If raising it didn’t hurt employment he’d want it up significantly higher. “You do lose some employment as you increase the minimum wage, if you didn’t I would be for having it $15 an hour,” he said.

Many states and cities have recently raised their minimum wage rate above the federal minimum and President Obama is pushing for Congress to raise the nationwide rate to $10.10 an hour.

When Amazon (AMZN) released Fire TV earlier this month, it was easy to be underwhelmed. Physically, it didn’t look much different than Apple TV (AAPL) or Roku, and it lacked one of their best features: the ability to watch HBO (TWX). While the device still looks a lot like its competitors, Amazon has just leapfrogged the field on the HBO front. The company said on Wednesday that it will offer not only the HBO Go app on Fire TV, but also give Amazon Prime subscribers the ability to watch some HBO shows free.

Don’t get too excited, True Detective fans. Shows will be added to Prime’s free streaming service about three years after they air. For now, viewers can re-live the joys of The Sopranos, The Wire, and Six Feet Under, with more shows to come over the course of the partnership. The first batch will be made available on May 21st. In addition, HBO will have an app ready for Fire TV by the end of the year.

Bitcoin vault Xapo made news in March after launching an insured, secure repository for big BTC investors. The service, which has gone so far as to bury paper bitcoin keys in underground vaults, has become a big finance darling. Now it’s going after the average user by offering credit cards directly linked to a Xapo bitcoin wallet.

“Most of our customers keep 90% of their bitcoin in our vault and 10% in their wallet,” said Wences Casares. The addition of card access to these wallets will allow that 10 percent to be instantly transferred to cash.

“It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct,” Sigmund Freud said.

There’s always a tension between how much we should follow our instincts and how much we should yield to social conventions. But at times like ours, the tendency is to tilt too far toward our instincts, since the conventions are changing fast and there’s no consensus about them anyway. There’s a risk in that. You don’t know whom you might be offending or how you might be sabotaging your own success.

The original etiquette manuals of Western civilization were in fact success manuals. As author Steven Pinker notes, they taught knights and nobles how to conduct themselves in the court of the king—which is where we get the concepts of “courtly” and “courtesy.”

I asked some tasteful and civilized friends and colleagues what an updated manual for 2014 would look like. Here are 27 rules to help you, whether at an office lunch, the company gym or the birthday party of your child’s schoolmate.

You’ll notice a common denominator in all of them: Think about other people’s feelings first because it’s not all about maximizing your personal convenience.